by Jason Trevor
“Damn the bad luck!” Joe knew where he was going with this, but Detective Sims seemed too eager to tip his hand.
“Yeah, bad luck. Do you know anything about that burglary?”
“Not a thing. I was here working and sleeping all that night. Why would I?” Now Joe was lying to the police. He had to choose every word carefully, or else his war against the Blood Brothers would be over before it began.
“Well, there is a pharmacy, a cell phone repair shop, and a jewelry store, all on that block. They all have alarms, but the jewelry store is the only one that has cameras and they are antiquated crap. Every single one of those places is an easier target with better goods to hawk than an ice cream parlor, wouldn’t you say?”
“I guess. You’re the detective,”
“So why, do you suppose, someone chose that ice cream shop, on that night, to break in to?”
“I can’t say, but if you’re implying something, I would prefer that you cease with the coy mincing of words and say what you mean,” Joe tried not to get sharp as he said it.
“Fine. Did you steal the recorder to try and see who shot Foster? Do you intend to try and seek justice on your own, like some old west vigilante?”
“I have a business to run that consumes eighteen to twenty hours of every day,” Joe exaggerated. “I have such a clean criminal record that there is not even so much as a traffic violation to my name. You know, when an old Air Force friend of mine who works for the Houston FBI field office called yesterday telling me that my jacket had been pulled, I should have guessed it was you,”
“Why would you have guessed it was me?”
“Because I haven’t talked to anyone else in years who even has access to it, besides him,”
“You had quite a career in the military. There’s also a lot of redactions in there,”
“Because you don’t have clearance for some of the work I did. Air Force Special Ops is above the pay grade of a city detective,” Joe immediately regretted “pulling rank” on him. That was sure to escalate the discussion in a bad way. To his surprise, it was the detective who diffused it by switching the subject back.
“I see. Well, you never answered my question. Did you steal the recorder, and do you plan to involve yourself in my investigation illegally?”
“Of course not. I told you I want to help. Stealing your evidence is not helping, and I’m too busy to play Paul Kersey,” The irony of his denial and justification was not lost on Joe as he smiled inwardly.
“Ah, a movie reference about Death Wish. I like that,”
“Novel, actually. I never saw the movie because I’m sure it wouldn’t do justice to the book,”
“Hmm. I never knew the movie was based on a book. Maybe I’ll give it a read,”
“When you have time, after you catch Foster’s killer, right?”
“Of course. Thanks for your time. Please keep yourself available in case I have more questions or need you to come in to the department,”
“I’ll do that. Like I said, anything I can do to help,” Joe hung up the phone and tossed it back on his desk. So much for gleaning information from the detective, but at least now he knew they were watching him, so he would have to choose his steps carefully.
Then the phone rang again.
◆◆◆
Greenie stood in the parking lot of an abandoned liquor store on a Godforsaken dirt road an hour and a half outside of Houston. He was leaning against the hulking bumper of an OD green M35 deuce and a half that had been built by AM General in 1975, decommissioned and auctioned by the army in 1998 as part of the Gingrich-Clinton downsizing, and bought for cash four days ago with no bill of sale by Greenie at an estate sale in Utah wherein the deceased owner’s family insisted that it had been purchased from someone in Colorado who had lost the title. A taught new canvas was stretched over the steel frame of the cargo area, and what lay within would be as good as Christmas morning to Joe, if he ever arrived. The Texas sun was getting to him and the truck wasn’t air-conditioned, so there was no place to escape the heat. He brushed at one of his mutton chops to chase a pesky fly that had been bothering him since he arrived, then strolled across the broken and craggy asphalt parking lot to the dusty road, looking westward into the afternoon sun for a dust cloud that would indicate an approaching vehicle, but not expecting one. To his surprise, there was one. As it got closer, his face became drawn.
“Oh, come on!” Joe raced past him and swerved an ugly, broken down Super Beetle into the bumpy parking lot. “You couldn’t let me drive home in your cushy, air-conditioned Caddy?”
“No way. We don’t know each other, especially on this deal. Do me a favor and push this piece of crap into a lake after you get back,” said Joe as he got out of the car.
“I just spent two days driving from Utah in a noisy deuce and a half that doesn’t have A/C. You could have at least gotten me that much for the ride back to town from here,”
“This was cheap,”
“I bet it was. Did they pay you to take it?”
“They should have. It broke down twice on the way here,” Greenie peered in the window at the dash.
“At least it has a radio. That’s more than I can say for the M35,”
“It doesn’t work. Or at least the tuner doesn’t. Maybe the 8-track does. There’s a clunky old CB under the dash that works if you’re willing to put that nasty microphone near your mouth,”
“Who am I going to talk to? If this ain’t the middle of nowhere, it’s probably just a little further down this road,”
“I think I passed through it on the way here. Didn’t you see it on the way? Jimmy Hoffa and Amelia Earhart were there playing cards,”
“No, my butt’d had all it could take by then and I just wanted to stop driving that monster,”
“Green Beret sissy. What did you get me?” They strolled to the back of the truck, threw back the canvas flap, and both climbed in. Joe’s eyes widened.
“Did I deliver, or what?” The truck was loaded with the best collection of guns, weapons, and hardware that Joe had seen since he was in the Air Force. He moved some body armor off of a crate, opened it, lifted out an AR-15, inspected the side, and smiled.
“Full auto conversion! Looks like the rest of it is still mil-spec,”
“It’s essentially an M16 now. You’ve got about twenty 30-round mags and a half dozen 100-round drum mags. There’s also an M203 grenade launcher you can attach to it in that box right there, plus two hundred grenades in that crate,” he pointed. “I hope 3 pairs of cans of Tannerite exploding targets is enough. Those three strawberry pecks are your hand grenades; old-school pineapples, flash-bangs, and tear gas,” He dragged over a cardboard box with several plastic handgun cases in it. “Two each, 1911’s with American Munitions frame conversions, Glock nines, Ruger .40’s, and some Smith .380’s in case you need something tiny,”
“Suppressors?”
“Everything but the .380’s, but I figure you can make those yourself,”
“Baby nipples will get the job done well enough if I end up needing one for them,”
“You’ve also got an M&P10 with one helluva scope and 5 boxes of Creedmoor for your long shots. This one came from a police impound in Baltimore and it has some homemade parts that aren’t serialized. It’s as clean as they come and was never supposed to see the light of day again,”
“This is awesome, and the truck is perfect,”
“Speaking of trucks, I haven’t gotten to the best part,” Greenie grabbed a tiny paper sack from the corner of the cargo bay and handed it to Joe. “Check this out,”
Joe opened the sack and dumped its contents into his hand. It was the fob and key from a Chevrolet truck. “What’s this?”
“Do you read the paper?”
“Sometimes,”
“It seems that late last year a Central American dictator was violently deposed by an uprising led by a local drug cartel. His worldly possessions were confiscated by the drug lords or scattered acros
s the black market. You are now the proud owner of a Suburban that used to be part of his entourage,”
“Tactical?”
“Concealed turret-mounted M134-D pops out of the roof. It comes with a Suburban-sized cargo compartment full of belts. It’s arriving in a cargo container at the port of New Orleans tomorrow with a manifest that says golf balls. Congratulations, you got your minigun. Don’t shoot your eye out,”
Joe’s jaw went slack. He was amazed at what Greenie had managed to procure in such a short time. Wondering how much of this stuff Greenie had already been hoarding before they made their deal, he fished a rabbit’s foot out of his pocket with a peculiar brass key on it and handed it to Greenie. “Amegy branch on Barker Cypress northwest of town. Box number 217 under the name Priority Technology. There’s a lot of well-earned dead presidents in there for you,”
“Excellent. Thanks. I guess I’ll head home in my VW jalopy. The bank will be closed by the time I get there, but that box will be empty before lunch tomorrow!” He jumped down from the truck and glared at the rickety car. “A deal this big and you couldn’t have gotten me a better car?”
“Enjoy the ride, listen to some truckers tell dirty jokes on the way,” Joe snickered.
Chapter 6
Biggie strolled down Emancipation Avenue, past the park, toward the pawn shop at the corner of Dennis Street. Headphone wires dangled down his shoulders to his pants pocket as he sang along with the Travis Scott song playing on his iPhone. He squawked loudly and talentlessly, not caring who heard or who he bothered as he spewed expletives from the Astroworld album. He had some jingle to make off of last night’s take from the boys that he was carrying in his backpack, and he felt good. It was almost lunchtime, and he’d double back to the seafood place on Elgin after business was handled. As he was passing the ‘Jects apartments a white guy stepped out from behind a car in the parking lot, into his path.
“Hey man, you got the time?” The guy was 40-ish, had no hair, was wearing a dark hoodie, baggy pants, and looked like he had dressed that way just to be in this ‘hood.
“Fuck you, Whitey,”
“Aw, that’s not very nice! At least give me a light!” the guy pulled a cigarette out of his hoodie pocket. “I’ll give you a smoke for it. They’re menthols!”
“Nigga don’t smoke. I said fuck you,” Biggie tried to walk around the man, but then his ear suddenly seared with pain. He found himself dragged off of the sidewalk into the parking lot by his ear and his head forcefully bounced off of the rigid part of a car, near the door frame. He saw stars and his vision turned black, then returned as a blur. Before he realized what was happening, he was dragged into the pathetic excuse for a hedge alongside the parking lot.
“Now, that was just a totally impolite way to talk to me. I didn’t do anything to deserve that,” Biggie found himself on his back in the briars and bits of trash, the man had one knee centered on his chest just above his stomach, forcing the wind out of him, and had his left index finger pressed into the indentation at the base of his neck, hard. He tried to scream, but couldn’t make a sound. “This hole in your neck that I have my finger in is called your suprasternal notch. If I press just a little bit harder and angle down, I’ll crush your windpipe and maybe even damage part of your heart. You’ll definitely have thyroid problems. I suggest you just listen,” Biggie nodded the best he could. “You ripped off a silver truck that belonged to a friend of mine, Foster Shayne. Remember that name. Tell all the boys in your little club. I’m coming for you. You’re going to die. Painfully. All of you. Your days of running these streets are over. Every time you close your eyes to sleep, you need to worry if you are ever going to wake up again. I’m coming right to your doorstep at your crappy little house on Delano, and hell’s coming with me. Go tell your little friends, and don’t ever stop looking over your shoulders,” The man pulled a pistol with a silencer out of the hoodie pocket with his free hand. “I need to make sure that the message gets delivered, too.” Biggie’s eyes widened as the suppressed click of the pistol blew off two of his toes, but his screams went unheard due to the finger on his neck. As his mouth was open wide with the silent scream, the man shoved the large end of a light bulb into his mouth. “Quiet now. Don’t cause a scene, and be careful trying to pull that light bulb out. It’s going to shatter when you pull it against your teeth. I don’t want you to swallow any glass and die before you can spread the good news!”
◆◆◆
Johnny Le rushed breathlessly into the homicide offices and looked around. “Sims! Sims!” he hurried across the room to the desk where the detective was standing.
“Whoa! What’s up? Where’s the fire?” Cody caught him and sat him in a chair. “C’mon dude, catch your breath! What’s going on?” Le gulped hard and then croaked against a dried throat.
“It’s Biggie! Someone just shot off his foot!”
“What???”
“I had just headed out to scope the neighborhood and my CI in the apartment complex at the corner of Emancipation and Tuam says he saw a white guy in a hoodie drag Biggie off the street, bust his head on a car, pin him down in the bushes, and shoot his foot off!”
“Just his foot?”
“Yeah, weird, right? It gets weirder. Then he says he saw him shove something in Biggie’s mouth. He thinks it was a light bulb!”
“Are you messing with me?”
“No! He isn’t sure because he says the window was dirty and they were across the parking lot, but he thinks it was a light bulb,” Sims sank slowly into a chair across from Le.
“Someone is sending a message to the Blood Brothers. It has to be our man, Danton. Can your CI identify him?”
“He swears he can’t. I offered a lineup, but he told me over and over it was just your average white guy,”
“Damn. Any other witnesses?”
“None that I know of yet. It just happened a few hours ago. I’ve got a few uniforms doing a canvass, but they won’t get much in that neighborhood,”
“Did Biggie go to any hospital or neighborhood clinic or anything? Can we talk to him?”
“He won’t. GSW’s are an automatic call to the police, so they’ll try to bandage it themselves. Dumbasses!”
“Dumbasses is right. He could die of gangrene. That’s if he doesn’t die from swallowing glass trying to pull a light bulb past his teeth,”
“The Brothers are going to be looking for this guy. He just started a war,”
“Unless they know that he lives way out in the ‘burbs, they’ll never find him. Plus, he’s trained as the best in the world at not being found if he doesn’t want to be,”
“Are you sure it’s your vic’s friend? Couldn’t it just be a coincidence?”
“I don’t believe in coincidences, and this is way too much of one. A member of a gang gets shot by a white guy in a neighborhood that’s only 10% white, a few weeks after that same gang shot a white guy’s friend to death? And this particular white guy is a trained badass? No, that’s not a coincidence,” he scratched his chin and thought for a few seconds. “I should be able to pull a warrant with this. We can compel Danton for a GSR check. We need to go right now. Are you coming? His house is a long drive. I can call Judge Lemond on the way,”
“It’s not my case, but I want to see this. Give me his address and I’ll call CSU to meet us there for the GSR test while you talk to the judge,”
◆◆◆
Joe screeched his Charger into a warehouse park off of Beltway 8 and Highway 59 that he owned, although not on paper, and ran inside as he pulled off the navy-blue hoodie. He kicked open a toolbox next to his newly-acquired Suburban, which sat on jack stands with the hood up. It needed more work than Greenie had let on. He impatiently unscrewed the suppressor from his Ruger, snatched a small round file out of the toolbox, and jammed it in and out of the barrel of the pistol at a few awkward angles until he was sure that the riflings were thoroughly altered. He also grabbed a one-gallon can of acetone and poured it all over his right ha
nd and forearm, rubbing it in good as he winced against the burn. He jogged over to the deuce-and-a-half, tossed the pistol and suppressor into a crate in the back, and ran back outside with the hoodie balled up under his arm. His renters in the next building were not there, but he could see that they had finally ordered a second dumpster. The first one was always so full that his parking lot was getting littered with debris and boxes. Even pushing them to increase the pickups to daily hadn’t been enough. The garbage company hadn’t come yet and one of the dumpsters was as full as ever. The truck would be by that night. He jumped back into the Charger, raced over to the dumpsters, and stuffed the hoodie into an empty box in the dumpster, followed by pulling off the ridiculously baggy pants that he was wearing over his denim shorts and stuffing them in there as well. That would be gone by morning for sure. Then he let the Charger’s horses loose as he zoomed out of the parking lot and raced back home.
◆◆◆
“I don’t know!” yelled Biggie for the hundredth time. “He was just a white guy! Bald. Glasses. Plastic ones. He was mad as shit at you for popping the homes in the silver truck week ‘fore last, Tony!” Bone poured more vodka on the glaring gap at the end of Biggie’s foot as he screamed again. Then Bone wiped it off some more with a rag, but it continued to bleed.
“Nigga needs a doc,” said Bone. “This shit is bad,”
“Tough shit!” argued Tony. “He go to a hospital, they call five-oh. That shit ain’t happening,” Tony’s younger brother, Bullet, looked on and rolled his eyes. He didn’t dare argue with his hot-headed sibling, though.
“Nigga, he could die!” argued Bone.
“Nigga that shot him gonna die. If Biggie dies, I’ll figure out how to kill the motherfucker twice. Bullet knows all about the guns. He can find a way. Tell me more about him!” he glared at Biggie again, wanting more details.
“I didn’t check his license! Just another white motherfucker. They all look the same to me! He just kept talking about his friend, Forest Shin or some shit,”